Burrows Read online

  Burrows

  A Red River Mystery

  Reavis Z. Wortham

  www.ReavisZWortham.com

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright © 2012 by Reavis Z. Wortham

  First Edition 2012

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 22011942735

  ISBN: 9781615953943 epub

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.

  Poisoned Pen Press

  6962 E. First Ave., Ste. 103

  Scottsdale, AZ 85251

  www.poisonedpenpress.com

  [email protected]

  Contents

  Burrows

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Author Note

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  Dedication

  This one is for two educators who impacted my life and set me on this writing course. Miss Russell, the redheaded elementary librarian who is no longer with us, and Miss Adams, my most influential high school English teacher who is still exactly the same as she was in 1970.

  Chapter One

  Drip.

  Though slight, the wet splat was clearly audible on the warm front porch of the small Lamar County farmhouse. Josh Brooks rocked ever so slowly as the late evening breeze waved the long grass along the nearby fence row and ruffled his curly brown hair. He stared at his lap, breathing as if trying to save energy or control his emotions.

  Drip.

  A Hereford on the other side of the barbed wire scratched her chin on a bodark fence post and swished her tail at a pestering cloud of late season flies. Josh’s boyhood friend Kendal stepped outside through the wooden screen door and allowed it to slam shut.

  For a moment Kendal stopped, expecting a scolding for banging the door. When they were children, it was almost impossible to remember to close it softly, and every kid that raced through Mrs. Brook’s living room allowed the door to slap shut about every third time.

  “Sorry Miss Onie!” Kendal called through the screen to Josh’s mother.

  The neat, elderly house in the small farming community of Forest Chapel belonged to Josh, who had never lived anywhere else. His dad, Oscar, had farmed the one hundred eighty acres until a heart attack felled him one soft spring morning as he fed the cows. Josh turned twenty-one a year after the funeral and married the prettiest girl in Forest Chapel, Beth Dearborn. Miss Onie Mae let them have the master bedroom, moved to the other side of the house, and they never looked back.

  Drip.

  Sporting a burr haircut, Kendal sipped on a glass of sweet tea. Everyone said Miss Onie Mae Brooks made the best tea in the county. “You need to get that drip fixed, Josh.”

  The young farmer didn’t respond as Kendal strolled across the wooden boards of the pier and beam farmhouse and settled into a mismatched rocker beside Josh. The setting sun cast long autumn shadows across the yard, bathing it and the pasture in a warm glow.

  A tinny radio in the background played a Chuck Berry song.

  “You know, Josh, it’s been good to see you again after all these years. Remember how it was here in the evenings when we were kids? I really enjoyed those summer nights; catching lightning bugs in jars and playing chase.”

  Drip.

  Kendal sighed, enjoying the tinkle of ice against the glass that once held store-bought jelly. “Most of the time anyway. When Randal Wicker and Merle Clark played with us it kinda irritated me. Seems like with the four of us, I was always low man on the totem pole. You think it was because I was different? I suppose it’s the nature of kids to gang up on one for some reason. Anyway, it don’t matter none anymore, does it?

  “I thought about those days when I was in the hospital. There was nothing else to do all those years except lay there and think, or listen to the radio. Most of the time I wished I was back here with you, being a kid again.”

  Kendal rocked and grinned at a sudden memory. “You know, Randal really wasn’t as good a friend as you were. I guess he and Merle were more like a team, like you and me should have been. That came to mind the other day, too. The radio was on when I was coming down here from Nebraska and I found a station playing that new song ‘And I Love Her’ by the Beatles. That’s when a memory clicked and it was the four of us playing ball out here in the grass, but we weren’t listening to them long hairs back then, were we?

  “But anyway, it was that song, this time of the year, and the weather that made me think to myself ‘You need to stop by and see them boys because it’s been a long, long time since y’all last visited.’ So here I am.

  “You remember that day Merle got an extension cord and brought the Philco outside and put it right there by Miss Onie Mae’s peonies and turned it up loud while we played baseball?”

  The pleasant demeanor crumbled for a moment, and Kendal chuckled. “I’ve always thought Randal was kinda jealous of me, especially because I got a new glove for Christmas that year.”

  Hey sissy, are you stupid or what? Is somethin’ wrong with you? C’mon and catch the ball ya moron! Don’t be afraid of it!

  “You remember that? I loved the smell of a new ball glove fresh out of the box. I don’t even think girls ever smelled so good, except for Beth that is.

  “Man, wasn’t she someth
ing? I especially remember how she’d run her fingers through that Esther Williams hair of hers and pull it back behind one ear, real sexy-like. Oh, yeah, I guess you do, since you wound up marrying her. She was crazy about you from the get-go, even when we were little. I wish things had been different for me, but I can’t quit thinking that if things were normal she might have liked me best.”

  Josh let the comment go without answering. His finger twitched on the rocker’s armrest, then he settled back again.

  Drip.

  Kendal laughed and called through the door. “Ain’t that right, Beth? We had some times all right. But y’all were always playing those jokes on me, calling me sissy or sister-girl. I never did learn to tell when you were kidding or pulling a prank.”

  They rocked while Josh allowed the conversation to be monopolized.

  “The best one was when y’all sprinkled those leaves over the limbs and trash washed across that little draw down by the creek bottoms and convinced me it was solid enough to walk across. Whooee! I thought I wouldn’t stop falling until I landed in China. That draw must have been fifteen feet deep. Busted my lip and I nearly bit through my tongue. You boys were practical jokers all right.”

  A sudden gust blew across the road, threatening to snatch Josh’s cap.

  Drip.

  “That danged drip is really getting annoying. We’ll need to fix it pretty soon. Anyway, Merle was kinda mean sometimes. Like when y’all told me you didn’t want to play. Oh hell, I knew y’all were sneaking off together without me, and don’t think I didn’t see what you did when no one was watching. That’s what hurt the worst, me wanting to be with you and y’all stringin’ off alone and leaving me.”

  They sat for a moment longer, watching the sun settle toward the tree tops. Kendal drained the glass and set it carefully on the painted two-by-four serving as the porch rail. “Well, we had our secrets, didn’t we? But the things you did…the things you said…well, that’s why I’m here.

  “My therapist told me it was best to lay the ghosts, and that’s what I’m trying to do. Matter of fact, he’s right and I feel pretty good right now. Going by Randal’s yesterday and this stopover did wonders for me; seeing you, Beth, and your mama. Well, I need to keep moving and there’s a lot of people to visit before I have to move on.”

  The driver in the two-tone 1958 Buick Roadmaster convertible honked impatiently and then returned to slapping spilled flour from his sleeve. Behind the wheel, Kevin’s tolerance was wearing thin because they had places to go. And besides, he was hungry. He wanted to run up to the Center Springs store. He had his mouth set for rat cheese and crackers, something he hadn’t tasted in months.

  “All right, Kevin, you dumb bastard.” Kendal stood and stared down at Josh. “I made a mistake getting that aggravating son of a bitch out of Tulsa. He’s worrisome and I’m about tired of traveling with him. You know Kevin, though, he’s from over in Boggy Bend. His daddy is Don Jennings.”

  Kendal adjusted the .22 revolver stuck in the waistband of half-damp, slightly oversized jeans stolen from Beth’s clothes line. A razor sharp Old Hickory butcher knife from the kitchen rode snug behind a plain leather belt. With a forefinger, Kendal reached out, caught a small drip hanging on the end of Josh’s nose, and carefully wiped the red liquid on his already soaked pants.

  “All right. I’m gonna drop by and see Merle here in a little bit. You know, y’all shouldn’t a-done me the way you did, but I reckon that’s about settled, and then I’m going to Mexico for a while.

  “Anyway, you don’t look so good, boy. Guess a .22 bullet rattling around in there behind your eyes will do that. But you still need to get that drip fixed.” Kendal laughed, chewed an almost non-existent fingernail for a moment and started down the steps. “Oh, one more thing I need to do before I go. Won’t take a minute. Hold your horses, Kevin and don’t you get up either, Beth! You and Ma lay there by the fire where it’s comfortable. Good to see y’all again.”

  Drip.

  Crackle.

  Splash.

  Chapter Two

  I was in the pasture, sneaking up on a field lark in the tall tickle grass, when I heard Grandpa’s tractor turn onto the oil road leading out of the bottoms. I got the idea from television the night before when I saw a soldier on Combat use his rifle to push down the grass as he crawled up on a German machine gun nest.

  I was making a pretty fair belly sneak for an eleven year old, but Hootie made things harder as he raced around sniffing for quail in the November sunshine.

  Truthfully, I was out there because Miss Becky had gotten a call and when I heard who was on the other end of the line, I figured it would be best to make myself scarce. It was surprising that Mr. Elmer Hughes would take the time to pick up the phone and complain about me throwing dirt clods at the pickups passing on the highway.

  Great-grandpa Will Parker built our house on a little hill overlooking the bottoms. The main highway coming over the creek bridge from the east was arrow straight for a mile before curving around our house like a stream around a boulder. The high position gave me a perfect setup to chunk clods at passing cars and trucks. I was pretending to bomb them, like in Combat.

  The hard sand clods hadn’t actually hit anyone, but they made dusty little puffs on the highway as the cars went by. I had the range down when Mr. Earl passed, and a pretty good sized clod hit directly in front of his truck. I didn’t figure it would hurt the paint on that old wreck none if I did hit him, and I didn’t, but he tapped his brakes and I skinned out of there before he could see who was hiding up near the corner post of Grandpa’s overgrown barbed wire fence.

  Anyway, just as I got close enough to get a shot at the bird, I heard Grandpa’s old two-cylinder Popping Johnny tractor turn out of the bottoms. Because the breeze was out of the northeast, I also heard our radio through the open window over a hundred yards away. Miss Becky had it turned to a loud sermon about The Beatles and how that new rock and roll group was going to take everyone straight to hell before 1964 was done.

  As I slid forward, I caught a glimpse of the tractor as it came down the oil road on the other side of the pasture.

  Then a big ol’ snake stuck his head out of the dry grass not two inches from my arm. I didn’t recognize what kind it was. It might have been anything from a copperhead to a blue racer, but it didn’t make me any difference.

  It was a snake and I was always scared of snakes as I was of a bear.

  We froze, almost nose to nose. It was strange, because everything suddenly snapped into crystal clarity. I took in the sharpness of its scales, the pattern they made, and the way its body expanded and contracted as it breathed.

  I’d heard enough stories about them who’ve been bit. Doctors tie tourniquets above the bite and make deep cuts with a sharp knife into each fang mark. The arm or leg swells up and turns black. Then the flesh dies and sloughs off to reveal bone and tendons. Old Mr. Harry Nichols was missing the little and ring fingers of his left hand from where a water moccasin bit him when he was a boy and he got gangrene.

  The tractor came closer and turned onto the two-lane highway. From there it was only a couple of hundred yards to the gravel drive leading up to the farmhouse. Clear as a bell I heard a scissortail singing while he jumped up and down on top of a telephone pole by the highway.

  The sound was wonderfully natural while I laid there and stared at what I finally figured to be a water moccasin. The pool wasn’t a hundred yards away and the snake was hunting, like me. I was fascinated by those glassy black eyes.

  Its tongue flicked out.

  It was too much. My face flushed with heat and I prickled all over with fear. Before it could coil, absolute terror jolted me into action. I jumped to my feet with a shriek and raced back toward the drive. Hootie saw my sudden leap and shot across the pasture, weaving in and out of the bull nettles and over the milkweeds.

  Grandpa Ned waved as we ran parallel to the road. From his perch high on the tractor’s hard metal seat, he had no idea I w
as running in panic. I was so scared I forgot to watch out for the bull-nettles and brushed one of the plants. The tiny hairs poked through my jeans.

  I barely paid any attention to the burning in my leg as I ran to the barbed wire fence and realized I’d cheated death one more time. Hootie slid under the lowest strand of wire and I followed closely behind.

  I was safe! No snake bite. I suddenly felt as if I could float in the air like a balloon. My fear went away in an instant and I whooped and charged the tractor, filled with relief.

  Grandpa turned into the drive and stopped his John Deere as we cleared the wire. He pushed the clutch lever and grinned down at me. “Top! Did you finally get up? Hand me that rifle and climb on up here!”

  Jittery from excitement and relief, I realized I still had my BB gun. I handed it up, the muzzle pointed away. Grandpa laid the air rifle at his feet, extended a sun-browned hand, and pulled me upward to stand on the wide axle beside the iron seat. His blue work shirt and overalls suited him; soft and faded from scrubbings in the team of square metal washtubs on the back porch. I grabbed hold of his gallus for balance.

  “Hang on!” He pushed the tall throttle bar. Hootie ran in a wide circle around us. The virtually worn out tractor jolted forward, tires popping on the gravel.

  Grandpa used to be a farmer and the constable in Center Springs until he had enough of toting the law in Precinct 3. He retired and left his badge on top of the television months before, but he hadn’t escaped the plow. It was a good thing, because we all knew that he had to keep busy. If he sat down and did nothing, he’d die.

  From beside Grandpa I could see directly ahead into the hay barn on top of the hill. We followed the drive’s incline to the five-hundred-gallon gas tank. He shut off the engine.

  “Did you kill any birds this morning with that air gun?”

  “Couldn’t get a shot. Them field larks know just enough to stay out of range, but I did get two big old bullfrogs down at the pool right after I got up this morning. Miss Becky showed me how to clean them. She said she’d fry the legs for our dinner.”

  “Hope I get a bite. Here we go.” He grabbed my much smaller hand and lowered me back to the ground, letting me dangle for a moment like a monkey before he let go. He passed me the BB gun and despite his age, he climbed down like a young man and stretched the kinks out of his back. After wiping the sweat out of his hat with a faded handkerchief, he removed the nozzle from the gas pump and inserted it into the tractor’s tank. Grasping the handle, he cranked it to prime the pump, and then reversed the direction to fill the tank.